Mortgage with CIS income

Podcast approved by The Openwork Partnership on 17/09/2025.

What is a CIS mortgage? Can I get a mortgage if I’m paid through the CIS scheme?

A CIS mortgage is one that is based on your CIS payslips. If you work in the construction industry, you’re self-employed and you get a 20% deduction from your pay every week, fortnight or month, you’re probably on the CIS scheme.

Even though you’re technically self-employed, certain lenders will treat you like you’re employed. A lot of banks will ask self-employed people for two years of self-assessments – or three years – and use their net profits after tax and expenses.

But with a CIS mortgage, the amount you can borrow is based on your average gross income. Gross is before the tax is deducted, so it generally means you can borrow massively more than any other self-employed person out there.

Can you get a mortgage if you’re paid through the CIS scheme?

Yes – there are more lenders waking up to this, because it’s a good source of customers. Construction guys have solid, reliable incomes and work very hard – so why not lend to them?

How does being a CIS subcontractor affect my mortgage application?

If you’re self-employed and you’re paid through the CIS scheme, you’re a CIS subcontractor. That’s great news if you’re getting on the property ladder.

If you’ve got three months of payslips and at least one year’s history working in the construction industry that helps. It doesn’t necessarily have to be in the same role, and you could have previously been employed.

One thing to mention is that with roughly 100 mortgage lenders out there, only a few will lend based on your CIS income – somewhere between 15 to 20 of them. They tend to be smaller building societies that take more of a manual approach to your mortgage application.

Even if you’ve got a few blips on your credit record, we’ve got lenders for CIS income. So although there’s a smaller choice, there are still lenders there for everybody.

Do all lenders accept CIS income for mortgages? Are there specialist lenders for CIS mortgages?

There’s roughly about 100 mortgage lenders out there and 15 to 20 will accept CIS income. The important thing is that they won’t ask to see your tax calculations, which is helpful if you don’t have two years’ records.

Lots of people that come to me only have a year’s CIS – and some only have three months. Some have only been on CIS for three months, but do have another nine months’ self-employment. If we’ve got a year’s history we can find them a mortgage.

There are specialist lenders, but not just for CIS. They might specialise in bad credit or low credit scores. Maybe you haven’t been in the UK for long enough to build up a detailed credit history which means you’re struggling to get a mortgage.

We’ve got lenders that can help with that and do CIS as well – there are specialist lenders out there for very bespoke scenarios if you’re paid through the CIS scheme.

What documents do I need to provide for a CIS mortgage? How many months of CIS payslips do I need?

Apart from evidencing your ID with a passport, driving licence, or even shotgun licence with some lenders, you’re going to need to evidence your income.

That would require a CIS payslip. These come in all shapes and sizes – I’ve seen them all. We can do a whole episode on the types of information that would be on that payslip. But we typically need to see your gross income, your net income, and who you work for.

We also need to see bank statements showing the income matching up with payslips. It could be from three to 12 months of CIS payslips – it just depends on the lender. There are sometimes good reasons to go to a lender asking for 12 months’ records.

Perhaps you’re looking to buy a property and you’ve just come back from a month in Ibiza, which means you have a few weeks’ gap in your income. A lender that looks at the last three months will be no good. But with a lender that looks at the last six or 12 months, that will iron out the creases.

Do I need to have filed a tax return to apply for a mortgage with CIS income?

Absolutely not. This is the beauty of a mortgage based on CIS income. Mortgage lenders will not be asking to look at your tax returns, tax calculations or your SA302s.

If you’ve been self-employed for a few years and you’ve never done a tax return, your mortgage broker would ask why not – because obviously you’re meant to be paying tax on your income. But if you’re on CIS, the mortgage lender is not going to be asking for these.

How long do I need to be working under CIS before I can apply for a mortgage? Can I get a mortgage if I recently switched to CIS?

You only need to be doing CIS work for three months before you can apply for a mortgage.

If you’ve recently switched from being employed, or just regular self-employed but not through CIS, once you’ve got three months behind you we can get you a mortgage.

How do lenders calculate income for CIS workers?

Let’s say you’re a ground worker on a day rate of £200. If you’re working five days a week, you earn £1,000 before tax per week. If that was consistent over three months, that could be £52,000 a year. But lenders also assume that nobody works 52 weeks a year. We lose a week for bank holidays, a couple of weeks over Christmas, and they assume you take another week or two off for a rest.

So the lender works on 46 or 48 weeks of the year. At £1,000 a week, that’s £46,000 to £48,000 as usable income for the mortgage.

That’s really important – because at the time we’re recording in August 2025, a lot of mortgage lenders are giving affordability boosts to borrowers earning over £40,000. That’s really useful – somebody might earn £46,000 using their gross CIS income, but the profit on their self-employed accounts after expenses could be considerably less than £40,000.

With £46,000 pounds CIS income, profit on their tax calculation might only be £20,000, especially if they had a lot of expenses in that year. But the lender doesn’t care about that.

Can my gross CIS income be used instead of net income?

In every single circumstance that we use CIS income, the lender will only look at the gross. They use the figure before tax is deducted and before your expenses are taken off.

Will irregular income affect my mortgage chances?

CIS income by its nature can be irregular. That might be because you’re not on a day rate – you’re on an hourly rate, and you might not work the same hours every day. A client I met this morning had £3,000 income last month, £8,000 income the month before, and £3,000 income the month before that.

That’s quite irregular. He was on price work, pricing up a job and sending in invoices. You can earn a lot more money by doing price work, but it can create irregular income. It’s not a problem – mortgage lenders expect it.

How much can I borrow with CIS income?

The amount you can borrow is going to vary from lender to lender. As of August 2025, one lender says they can lend up to 5.5 times your gross income, if that’s more than £40,000 a year.

If you’re earning a day rate of £200, five days a week is £1,000. If this lender assumes you work 48 weeks of the year, that’s £48,000. If you don’t have any children, car finance, loans or money owed on credit cards, then potentially you could borrow 5.5 times that figure. That’s a significant amount.

But this does change from month to month, as lenders change their lending appetite in line with what’s going on with the market and the economy as a whole.

Can I combine CIS income with another source of income – for example, PAYE or my partner’s income?

If you’re applying with your partner, wife or friend and they have another income that isn’t CIS, you can combine the two together. That’s absolutely fine, not a problem.

One thing to point out, though, is where people are paid through CIS, but also do a second job. I had a painter and decorator last month paid through CIS, but on the weekend she did beauty therapy. That’s separate self-employed income.

With this, you cannot have your cake and eat it. If we’re using CIS income we can only use CIS income – we can’t bung in other sidelines. If you want to use all your income streams, we’re going to treat you as self-employed and go back to using two years of tax calculations.

What else do we need to know about getting a mortgage with CIS income?

I think we’ve covered everything, really. The main message is that if you are paid through the CIS scheme, make sure you speak to a specialist CIS mortgage broker to get expert advice.

YOUR HOME MAY BE REPOSSESSED IF YOU DO NOT KEEP UP WITH YOUR MORTGAGE REPAYMENTS.

Approved by The Openwork Partnership on 17/09/2025.